MIA05LA071 · Piper PA-24-260
Piper PA-24-260 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Merritt Island Airport (COI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA05LA071
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-24-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N9446P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merritt Island Airport (COI), Titusville, FLTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Initial climb
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, installation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The owner/pilot mechanic stated that during a maintenance test flight for a newly overhauled engine, he slowly started losing engine power at approximately 300 feet of altitude during the initial takeoff climb. He elected to turn left to return to the airport and not having enough altitude impacted with the swampy terrain, on the west side of lagoon. During the return to airport maneuver, he switched the fuel selector from the left tank to right tank and then back to left tank with no correction to the partial loss of power. He noted the fuel flow indicator want from 28 to 17. The owner/pilot mechanic performed two ground run up checks to the engine to about 2,200 rpms. He did not note any discrepancies during those checks. After the recovery of the accident airplane an engine examination was conducted by the owner/pilot mechanic and a representative of the New Piper Aircraft, Inc. with FAA oversight. During the fuel flow test, the electrical fuel pump was energized; the fuel out line at the fuel servo supplying fuel to the flow divider was observed spraying fuel and the B-nut was found loose. The fuel flow test was stopped. The line's B-nut was tightened and the test resumed. A test of the fuel mixture flow noted a rich mixture flow of approximately 7 gallons an hour while a mixture lean noted a flow of approximately 4 gallons an hour. A review of the accident airplane's maintenance log book document the engine installation work was completed per Lycoming O/H # 60294-7 (Textron Lycoming, Part number 60294-7, Overhaul Manual for Direct Drive Engine). Textron Lycoming, Service Instruction No. 1427B, outlines for the overhauled engine to have a ground run check up to full-static recommended power for a period of no more then 10 seconds. The full-static power for the accident airplane as per the airplane's flight manual is 2,700 rpm, with turbocharger control off. After operating the engine at full power, allow for cooling, check idle mixture and shutdown. The Piper PA-24-260, Comanche, Service Manual, 7A-33, details the procedures for engine installation; including cautions and warning pertaining to fluid leaks on the airframe components.
Probable cause
The owner/pilot/mechanics inadequate installation of a fuel line resulting in a fuel leak, partial loss of engine power, and force landing in swampy terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA05LA071
- Event ID
- 20050311X00299
- Case number
- MIA05LA071
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 453f72c8636224d802a2b1b7591e17d4a40ca91c58022fa46420240862c03139; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:13:34.084Z.